Joyce wins fight with engineers

Qantas Airways
and its engineers have in effect ended a nine-month industrial dispute, in an agreement that gives the airline most of what it wanted in the first place.

The terms of the four-year pay deal will be backdated to January 1 and were to be presented to Fair Work Australia yesterday.

Under the deal engineers receive annual pay rises of 3 per cent and have to adopt new, more efficient work practices made possible by new aviation technology.

The union dropped demands for the maintenance of Qantas’s A380 fleet to be done in Australia and other clauses designed to prevent the airline from setting up a new airline in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore.

The union gave in on stronger job security clauses. Fair Work Australia is expected to ratify the deal by the end of December or early in the new year.

Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association federal secretary Steve Purvinas said a national vote of the union’s 1600 members last week “overwhelmingly endorsed" the deal.

“Our agreement will not stop them starting up a premium carrier overseas but it certainly is going to secure the jobs of our members onshore. It’s just disappointing for us we couldn’t get the A380 work [onshore] but we have to be realistic about this. If we went to arbitration it most likely wouldn’t have come [onshore] anyway," he said.

Qantas chief executive
Alan Joyce
said the pay deal did not include any of the claims that would have restricted the airline from making changes needed to compete in the global aviation industry.

Related Quotes

Company Profile

“This deal was achievable nine months ago, without the pain for customers and for employees across the wider Qantas business," he said.

Qantas shares closed down 4.5¢, almost 3 per cent, at $1.47, and Virgin Australia shares fell more than 7.5 per cent.

Commonwealth Bank’s aviation analyst Matt Crowe said: “[The Qantas dispute] has never been about the numbers but about issues of management control. On that measure, Qantas appear to have got almost everything they were after."

“It’s a very good outcome for the company," he said.

Insiders said the engineers’ capitulation did not augur well for the remaining two unions: the Transport Workers Union and the Australian and International Pilots Association, whose arbitration hearings will be held next year in March and June respectively.

The association’s vice-president, Richard Woodward, said that given the drawn-out nature of the arbitration process, the union would prefer to reach an “agreed position" with management.

“However, if that’s not possible we remain very confident about the case we’ll take to arbitration," he said.